Lynn Steger Strong, writing in the New York Times in May 2021, said, “Great Circle grasps for and ultimately reaches something extraordinary. The story would have been much better, in my opinion, had Shipstead simply told the story of Marian Graves and left out the contrived framing story of Hadley. The novel draws parallels between the two women, but I found the comparison between them a tedious imposition. Hadley has been fired from the production of the hit series Archangel because of her scandalous behavior. The novel is framed by the story of actress Hadley Baxter, who is cast to play Marian Graves in a 2014 production of Graves’ life. The novel glosses Marian’s struggles as she becomes a driver for bootleggers in Prohibition-era Montana, an early aviator in the Alaskan and Canadian wildernesses and contributes, along with other women, to the war effort in England. She lives with him until he becomes abusive, and she decides to run away to pursue her own dreams. Finally, she marries a bootlegger in order to pay for her flying lessons and airplane. So, she takes a series of shady jobs to get the money. At age 12, after attending an airshow by barnstorming pilots, Marian decides she wants to learn to fly. As the story develops, Wallace’s devils slowly take over his life and the twins have to rely more and more on their own devices. He is also an alcoholic who likes to gamble. The twins grow up with Addison’s bachelor brother, Wallace, a painter. He never revealed the reason for the explosion and keeps the secret for the rest of his life. He lunges into the lifeboat and seals his fate, a captain who abandoned his ship! Later, Addison is sentenced to Sing Sing, where he is imprisoned for over nine years. As he looks at the panicked passengers, he realizes that he cannot entrust his flesh and blood to them. He rushes to Lifeboat 12 and fires his pistol into the air, planning to pass the twins to someone in the lifeboat. He acts without hesitation to save the twins. The twins are alone in their bassinettes with Annabel nowhere in sight. He rushes to his stateroom to find his twins and their mother.

On the voyage, six weeks later, there is an explosion on the ship, and Addison strives to save his passengers and crew. The Josephina Eterna, cursed at launching by an unbroken christening bottle, is his ship. Addison, a ship’s captain, decides Annabel needs to travel and a sea voyage is in order. Annabel, probably suffering from post-partum depression, has no interest in the twins. The novel begins with the birth of fraternal twins, Marian and Jamie, to Addison and Annabel Graves, an oddly matched pair. The sweeping saga of the fictional pilot, Marian Graves, and the history of women’s flight soars through the pages as Marian struggles to fulfill her dream of flying. “I was born to be a wanderer” is the first sentence of Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize.

Great circle novel reviews